Jill Rants and Raves

The Name Shame

Okay, so is America ready to elect a black man to be the guy with his finger on the red button to start a nukiller war? Hell yes. But the fruited plain aint no way gonna elect a man with a name like Barack Obama. No sir, no maam and goodnight. He's got the brains, he's got the style, he's got the charm, he's got everything you could want in a progressive politician and he isn't Hillary - no he's Barack, and I see an easy nomination for the third top democrat whoever that might be - as long as he isn't called Juan, Wolfgang, Lee Ho, or Shirley. What's in a name? Everything, if middle America can't pronounce it, or thinks that he changed his given name to a Muslim one.  It's a crying shame.

So I suggest a slight tweak - to Barry Jack O'Bammer. I think this will play well everywhere but Hollywood, which will elect Hillary to be President of Universal Pictures just so that she can bring Bill to cocktail parties.

This is going to be an ugly election season, all 2 years of it. Rightwing talk shows deliberately mispronouncing Barack's name and then acting righteously upset. 'Oh, I'm so sorry, of course I didn't mean Osama, we all know it's Obama' and caller after caller from North Dakota and Missouri wondering whether we will have to pledge allegiance to the Koran after the election. Shudder. The fact that the man himself says he is a member of the 1.2 million member United Church Of Christ doesn't seem to get any attention.

And I see a major conspiracy in the following - Ok, let's get this right.  Barack's dad was from Kenya, in fact I think little B was born there, and one of the best documentaries of the last couple of years was 'Boys from Baraka', and am I right in remembering that Baraka is in Kenya. And doesn't Baraka sound much like Barack? Wow. And the filmmakers who made 'Boys Of Baraka', Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady just made the utterly impressive and scary ' Jesus Camp' about the indoctrination of 7, 8 and 9 year olds into becoming the new generation of God's Army. And in that movie, Becky Fischer, the unselfconsciously bullying kid's pastor, declares that Muslims are putting grenades into the hands of their children so why shouldn't we turn our youngsters into warrirors for Christ. Are you following me?  No, me either.

So, Barack, an African American, born to a Kansas born white woman and a Kenyan father whose middle name was Hussein seems to me just the man to smash most of the stereotypes we hold most dear in this great dis/United States of Amerika.

The problem is - as the film Jesus Camp reveals - that evangelical Christians now believe that they hold the balance of power in American elections and that if they turn out to vote, they decide the election. Obama, O' Bammer....oh bummer.

Butch In Menopause Part 42

It's been a beautiful, cold, blue skied windy day in my world.  The world I'm in today is a gorgeous coastal town in northern California, and I've done things that one does here - walked on the beach with my dogs, bought a decent latte at the local caff, packed my station wagon to the rafters with the sort of junk that seems to accumulate on every country property (old piping, car parts, batteries and hoses for starters) and driven to the nearest dump where just the act of moving the junk from one piece of property to another seems hugely satisyfying. But as I am alone - except for the company of two dogs in their dotage, another with weak knees and the fourth, my adored, previously mauled almost to death, Roo - I am also doing my other thing that I do when surrounded by redwoods, firs and sky. Just think myself to distraction. Dig in my pocket for a piece of candy I swear I left in there and realise I'm not wearing my own jacket.
This brings me to the point here - m e n o p a u s e. I've written about this highly disturbing phenomenon before, as it relates to the dilemma of being a butch dyke going through what is a glaringly female hormonal horror movie. The back end of puberty is what it is. What makes menopause - the pre and the post - so impossibly irritating is that we all know it's coming, we all know what the potential issues are and we can do fuck all about it. It's like seeing the car wreck before it ever happens and being unable to swerve to avoid it.

So, what is interesting here - for me, at least - is that I - and if you're squeamish about 'women's stuff' put your blinkers on for a moment - seem to be moving past the worst of it. No More Hot Flashes! Do you have any idea how good this feels???? Any idea at all???? And the other related issue is that even though I still have some pretty gloomy days, some days when the dark shadows head in, they seem to be linked more to whether it is raining or not rather then the 'depression' that I feel has been lurking for over a year now.  So, I'm feeling a little like my old or should I say younger self. A kind of brighter self. And I have to tell you - all those years I avoided reading anything about menopause thinking that this could never happen to me, I feel sort of bad about it. Because menopause makes the average Butch just a tad angrier with the world.

So, where was I going with this. Oh, yes. I'm driving to the dump today, feeling kinda chirpy, I'm getting sand in my face on the beach and just loving it, I'm freezing my little fingers off while walking the dogs and just laughing like crazy because everyone tells me that the weather is rich and balmy back in the Bay Area. It is a beautiful day to be a Butch sliding through menopause, and my dogs are making me happy, and the trees and the mulchy earth are just, you know, making me feel like I'm stupidly high. The woman at the dump asked me for all the copper I had in my load, she charged me less for the rest of the stuff I left behind, I vacuumed my car out when I got home, and now I am going to eat salad for dinner, and like it.

I am almost worried about myself. But they do say the rain is coming in by Tuesday.

In The Name Of Love

I can't wait for Valentine's Day to be over. Today, at the grocery store, on a Wednesday at 2pm for chrissakes, the shopping frenzy seemed as intense as Christmas Eve, or early on Thanksgiving when some bright spark realises they've forgotten the yams, Memorial Day or Super Bowl Sunday. I despise the last minute shopping for things with 'I Need You' in silver sparkles sprinkled on them, the virulent red velvet sashes with 'I Love U' splayed across the chests of a million teddy bears, the way in which the word aphrodisiac is applied to every foodstuff on the overstocked shelves, and the spike in the rose price.

I'm just an unValentine.

In fact, the last time I actually attempted a Valentine celebration was over 15 years ago when my lover (at the time) and I booked a table at a swish restaurant in San Francisco. We found ourselves seated next to a guy (and his maybe wife, maybe girlfriend, maybe not) who, as soon as we sat down started making lewd comments about lesbians and doing that tongue thing guys seem to like to do when they are being gross about oral sex with a woman. What is that? Whatever it is, you all know what I'm talking about, and it's gross, right? Absolutely yucky. We're talking about a fancy restaurant, in Pacific Heights, on Valentines Day, on a pouring wet night, and this dude is with the woman he loves - maybe, maybe not - and he's acting like a frat boy. With an expensive bottle of wine. What a waste.

So, at the grocery store, people are shooting each other for parking spaces - no not really, because after all we are in Berkeley, and this is Whole Foods, but how many Range Rovers, Lexus SUV's and Escalades can you get in the parking lot of a store that prides itself on Fair Trade Coffee? If you can believe this, Whole Foods has valet parking.  But the valets were all off duty today, and Valentine's madness ruled. Honking horns, 'fuck you's' and finger pointing were all the rage.

Inside, the last heart shaped key lime pie was being packed up, the wine aisle was depleted, the boxes of chocolates and candies grabbed by anxious boyfriends with last minute panic about coming home empty handed. Sweet really.

How many marriages ended today? How many new sexual liasons were started in cheap motel rooms? And how many cars got dented in the parking lot of Whole Foods, while I waited patiently in line to pay for my organic burrito, aloe juice and Vanilla tapioca.

This is just an excuse to run a photo with the word 'love' in it.

Rainy Day Blogs

It's almost 30 years since the british lesbian and gay theatre company Gay Sweatshop arrived in Dublin for what would be an historic moment for gay rights in Ireland.

It's almost unthinkable now - what happened on that trip. We were due to perform at an alternative theatre venue, The Project Theatre, and it was the first time a professional homosexual theatre company had been openly promoted in this deeply religious country. All of us, men and women in this company, had anticipated hostility, anger, possibly even physical reaction, but we also knew that performing our two signature short plays - 'Mister X' and 'Any Woman Can', would be, for many closeted gays, a moment they would remember, and hopefully take strength from.

Dublin is one of the most hauntingly beautiful cities I have ever been in. I was moved emotionally, from the moment I set foot in it.  And as the women in Gay Sweatshop drove across the Liffey towards the theatre, in our horribly inadequate VW Bus, I looked at this city, as evening fell, with wonder and awe.

The men in the company had flown in from London that day - more on the women's trip across the water from Wales on a ferry in the middle of winter another time. Throwing up when you are absolutely freezing hurts more than you think it could. Suffice it to say I will never forgive Julie Parker and Nancy Duiguid for the brown rice diet they forced us all to be on that trip. Especially Julie (who by the way is a good buddy of mine in spite of this) because unbeknownst to me, she and Helen Barnaby had snuck off and eaten Mars bars behind the stone farmhouse in the middle of Wales while I was sticking to cold brown rice and Tamari. Wouldn't be surprised if they had a hamburger stuck in their backpacks.

But what we didn't know as we arrived, hungry and cold, and started to unload our equipment, was that the men in Gay Sweatshop had been arrested on their arrival. For being homosexual. And in Ireland that was still a crime. A crime for a man to love the man of his choice.

As the reality of the situation sunk in, we did our best to prepare the theatre while the amazing management of the Project Theatre and local civil rights lawyers mounted a swift and successful campaign to have our comrades released.  The night we opened our run at The Project Theater, an outpouring of overwhelming support engulfed us. 

I'm thinking about these things now because I feel, sometimes, as if all those battles, all those moments when we were spat on, abused, harrassed, all the times when the insults carved deep wounds into my psyche, happened to somebody else.  I feel as if even I have forgotten what it was like to fight, really fight for the very right to breathe. 

So, today is just a memory lane. A day when I wonder what were we fighting for?
And then I remember. Oh yeah, it's so that Rosie O'Donnell can get into onscreen battles with the Haircut (Trump) and so that Ellen deGeneres can do American Express commercials, and so that no gay man should ever die the death that my friend and colleague in Gay Sweatshop, Drew Griffiths - he sits on the right of this photo taken at the Project in Dublin - suffered (he was violently stabbed to death by a bigot, in his own home, after he had picked up the man to have sex). The crime remains unsolved.

So, this day is for Drew. And for anyone anywhere who came to the Project Theatre to see and hear queers celebrate the very act of being alive.

Stupor Bowl

I'm getting seriously soft in my middle age. I'm feeling a lot of empathy for other people at the moment, and it is very odd. I mean, you just have to listen to others talk about me and you know - I'm just a jerk. I'm mean, rude, angry and opinionated, critical, judgemental and just downright unpleasant. This is obvious because everybody else is impeccably happy, and I'm not.
Mind you, in spite of my 'prickly' persona, I have a Super Bowl invite tomorrow. This is not my idea of a good time. This means I will drive to San Francisco to hang out with two other decidely sarcastic people and eat too much guacamole. One beer into the first quarter and I'll feel a bit queasy. I hate football. There. It's said. At least I'm not going to a lesbian Super Bowl party - those are the worst. A bunch of women who pump their fists, act like a bunch of Marines and pretend to know the first thing about 300 pound guys thumping each other into next week.  Borat should have interviewed a couple of drunken dykes at a Super Bowl party - now that would have been a bloody laugh.
No, my Super Bowl do is with my nutty dog loving straight Bernal Heights buds. And I can't imagine spending more than ten minutes in front of the widescreen before heading off up to the Hill with my five beasts. 

And what is with the moralistic killjoys who banned the 'Go Daddy' ads. The cheerleaders are OK but Go Daddy's suggestive promotions cross a line? What line would that be? The 15 yard line? This is just such posturing on the part of the NFL and the media conglomerate that control this. Let's pretend we don't notice the rate of domestic violence, drug and steroid use, alcoholism and bad fashion choices of NFL players, and then get uptight about a bad boy like Bob Parsons, who got fabulously rich on  the simple idea of selling domain names, and is driving everyone else crazy because he isn't politically correct.

Where am I going with this? Oh, yes, I'm getting soft.  That was it.

The Divine Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins.

A True American Heroine. Leftwing. Progressive. Ruthlessly on the mark.  Feared and loved in equal measure. Unafraid to live life to the fullest and to name her dog Shitter.  Molly - you are missed. And as we, the people, are meant to be the deciders - End The War In Iraq. Now.

Friday Morning

Kinder Gentler Blog

Homage to iTunes

Well, as soon as I think there's nothing more for me to say, I'm sitting here listening to my iTunes - what the hell did we do before iPods and iTunes?  But who cares, they are here now and I am bloody well filled with gratitude. In fact, I'm so grateful for new technology, I have decided to see my best days as ahead of me, just so I can enjoy it more. But that wasn't the point of this little rant - do you realise there are actually people who say "Jill, you'll get further with people if you didn't rant all the time" and then something about honey getting more results than vinegar. Yeah, more flies. Geez....didn't you notice the title of this blog? Huh?

I haven't been a total failure in my life, but there are some who seem intent on making me feel absolutely lousy about the fact that I'm intense, that yeah, I'm volatile, and yeah, I get bloody sodding angry at times. And on the subject of iTunes, I am just knocked out by the fact that I can listen to Coldplay followed by AFI, by Smokey Robinson, Wyclef Jean and Flogging Molly...and that was the point of this blog.

But back to being angry. Aren't you angry? And if not, perhaps you haven't been paying attention. I mean, I don't think it's great to lose my temper with people, and it always shocks me when I do, and I feel contrite, I try to do something about it. But somehow anger doesn't seem to me to be such terrible emotion. It's fleeting, like happiness. And it's a reminder that one is alive, that one feels, really feels. Instead of carrying a bunch of pill bottles around, or stashing a quart of vodka in every conceivable freezer, instead of zoning out, I'd prefer to zone in, to feel whatever it is in every pore of my slightly small framed body.

Now, I admit that probably doesn't make me that easy to be around, and tomorrow I'll probably wake up and think 'shit, I'd better go write a much more gentle kinder blog', but somehow I always get back to this point. That life is always better ahead than it was behind, even though I get unbelievably sentimental about the past and the losses, and about how many of my animals are geriatric wrecks. I'll even admit I am definitely a 'what if' type of person, but I'm going to try and make a resolution - no point in feeling that guilty, what's done is done, and there are thousands of songs to download onto my iPod. Right now.